Celebrating International Women’s Day

Today, the world celebrates International Women’s Day. Celebrated since the early 1900s, the holiday found its roots in the United States when 15,000 women marched through New York City protesting inequality and oppression in the workplace. In 1911, the first official international women’s day was celebrated across Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland as women banded together to demand women’s worker rights. Now the day is celebrated in over 100 different countries all around the world to acknowledge and champion the advancement of women’s economic, political and social achievements throughout history.

Let’s take a look at some influential women in history:

Marie Curie was a brilliant Polish physicist and pioneer. Famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity, Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the only woman to win a Nobel Prize in two fields (Physics and Chemistry) and the first woman to be entombed in Paris’ famed Panthéon on her own merits.

Margaret Thatcher is a British politician and the longest serving Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of the 20th century, holding the position from 1979 – 1990. She is also the only woman to have held the post. Nicknamed the “Iron Lady,” Thatcher defined her own conservative political philosophy that has come to be known as Thatcherism.

Susan B. Anthony

Susan B. Anthony was a leading civil and women’s rights leader in the United States. An instrumental figure of the 19th century women’s suffrage movement, Anthony championed the right for women to vote. She helped draft the 19th Amendment of the United States Constitution, which prohibits any citizen to be denied the right to vote based on gender. Fourteen years after her death, the 19th Amendment was finally ratified, giving women the right to vote.

 
Are you related to these influential women? Do you have some great inspirational stories about women in your family trees? Share them with us in the comments below!